Entertaining Your Family

6 April, 2012 By: Debbie

Entertaining your family can be tough at times, especially if you have little ones, or if your budget doesn’t permit pricey family outings. One of the common choice of entertainment is the movies. But with young children it’s not one of the choices mom’s like to make. When my children were younger it was hard taking them to the movies, and movies aren’t really baby friendly. Until they were all over two going to the movies wasn’t on my list of fun entertainment and was more like work.

We did a lot of family fun at the parks, and backyard cook outs. When my children were older we’d spend our Saturdays at the local baseball field with t-ball practice, baseball practice and games. It later turned into cheerleading, football and us parents coaching. Our summer days were spent at the beach cooking out and socializing.

Our entertainment has changed through the years, but there is one thing we still do at least once a month. I call it McConnell’s Steak Dinner Movie Night! I turn our living room into a mini theater, cook steaks, bake potatoes, and serve dinner on tray stands. When the movie starts we have our dinners, two buckets of popcorn, theater style candy, and drinks.

I also make a sign and hang it on the door “McConnell’s Steak Dinner Movie Night”Time: 7:00pm Sharp, Location: The Family Room, Menu: Steak, baked potato (with the fixings), popcorn, candy, soda, juice or milk. Movies: List the two movies for the night.

I normally grab a couple of movies from Red Box or we would watch a special movie airing on TV that night. (if we haven’t seen) It’s always fun on Steak Dinner/Movie Night. It turned into something we all look forward too at least once a month. I don’t buy steaks often so it was fun turning this “well liked meal” into a family entertainment.

Family game night is also a fun and inexpensive way to entertain your family. I always wanted to do a family bowling night at home. We have a long hallway leading back to the bedrooms, I always thought it would be fun to get one of those plastic bowling sets ($7- $10 at Wal-Mart) and set it up down the hall and do a bowling night.

Some other things I enjoyed doing as a family were:
Craft night (simple craft we all could do at the table)
Play dough/ Model Clay Night (again we’d sit together at the table and make things with play dough or clay)
Lego building or puzzle building night. (we’d all build a lego thing (must of the time it was a thingy) or do a puzzle together.

I did Write a Story Together, which was a week-long event. I’d get a spiral notebook and give it to someone and they’d have to start a story for us as a family to write. The rules were they had to write at least half a page, and couldn’t keep the book for longer than a day. When one member finished their part, the book would be passed to the next. At the end of the week we’d read it while we were all sitting around the table after dinner.

Doing small fun things like this helped us save money for a family vacation, visiting out-of-state family, road trips, Disney or other theme parks, etc.

Do you entertain your family at home or go out? Do you have a family fun night tradition?

This article was written in conjunction with the A – Z Challenge, I’ve combined letters E – Entertaining and F – Family. Thanks for visiting me, you can follow me by linky followers, or Networked Blogs. If you don’t use either of those subscribe to my feed (an email directly into your inbox) Don’t forget to share, like and tweet. Happy reading and blogging all!

We try our best to have dinner as a family every night, and watch a good family movie, or old TV show together. We enjoy each and every night. Following you on Facebook, Networked Blogs, Linky followers, twitter, and Google+